Dandelions in the Rain
by Hakeber.N
Summary: A curious fireman, a supposedly crazy nature-lover, and a late-blooming dandelion. Basically a scene from F451, told from Clarisse's point of view. Criticize it to bits if you dare--this is my first fanfic, so I'm sure you'll find plenty to hate about it.


_Author's notes ahoy!  
So. I just finished Fahrenheit 451 (again), and I was reminded (again) of just how I think Clarisse feels about Guy. And I jumped off the deep end and actually wrote a fanfiction! Fancy that!  
I'm not sure if this should be fluff, or angst, or what, but ah well.  
Clarisse, Guy, Fahrenheit 451, and dandelions do not belong to me. They all (yes, even the yellow flowers) belong to Mr. Bradbury.  
My mother tells me this disclaimer won't stop the hordes of Copyright Thugs, but I can try, can't I?  
Anyway. On with the show!_

_********  
She was in love, she was a fool and she was in love and she was crazy and she was in love._

She was sure those three attributes would work well together.

She wasn't sure when it had started, really; she rationalized it at first, called it a novelty, the same as all the others. Surely, she claimed to herself, she felt the same way about this ash-faced fireman as she did for a new species of flower, or the morning birds perhaps—the initial flush, the spirit of discovery and observation.

Well. She'd discovered, she'd observed. It took her quite a while to realize the fact—that while her experiments with flowers and birds were moving on, progressing, she stayed transfixed with this. . .this _fireman._ Infatuated, even. And the spirit of her uncle in her wouldn't let the matter lay.

So. She initiated the contact, she walked him home and told him stories. He laughed, she smiled.

Today looked like it'd be no different. She was walking the length of the block, her eyes closed, drinking the rain. She opened her eyes, saw him, and smiled.

"Hello!"

"Hello yourself. What are you up to now?"

She grinned. It seemed he was conducting observations of his own. "I'm still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it."

"I don't think I'd like that," he said.

"You might if you tried." A flawed logic; if she liked it, he would.

"I never have."

She couldn't tell if he was being contrary as a joke, or on purpose. "Rain even tastes good."

He shook his head. "What do you do, go around trying everything once?"

"Sometimes twice." Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on both of us. Lies never won the lottery. She opened her hand to show her prize.

"What've you got there?"

A test, she thought, but said instead, "I guess it's the last of the dandelions this year. I didn't think I'd find one on the lawn this late." His look of surprise indicated he had never gone dandelion farming on his own lawn. "Have you ever heard of rubbing it under your chin? Look."

She grasped the flower's stem—she refused to consider the dandelion a weed, it was a flower, a nice one at that—and rubbed its yellow-looking-green-smelling bristles gently against the bottom of her chin.

He looked as if he was starting to believe her claims of insanity. "Why?"

She felt so much like a _teacher_—not a second-bit one at the School, but a useful one, the kind her uncle was. She was an old wife teaching her old wife's tale. "If it rubs off, it means I'm in love." Fool, fool, insanity shows itself; she was singing in her head, though it was the wrong kind of song—_turn back while there's time, can't you see the danger signs, soft shoulder. . ._

And back to the world of the sane. "Has it?" She obligingly tilted her head.

He was grinning, as if humoring her whims, but bent to look.

"Well?" She was nearly ballistic—in the literal sense—with excitement.

"You're yellow under there." He didn't say it, didn't say what it meant. . .

"Fine!" A short word, one that made her bite her bottom lip when she said it. "Let's try _you_ now."

He looked at her, worried—for himself, or for her?—"It won't work for me."

Her success had made her more daring than usual. She hadn't even bothered to wipe off the yellow on her chin. "Here." The stem was a bit bent now, but no matter—she stood on tiptoe to reach his stubbled chin, he wobbled backwards. She laughed. "Hold still!" Scrape, scrape, the dandelion now bare of its bristles. She backed up half a pace, but her smile disappeared.

There was no yellow on his chin.

"Well?" he said. Bless him, he sounded truly concerned. The thought to lie—tell him it was yellow, it was true—pushed itself, brash and loud-voiced, to the front of her mind. She ignored it.

"What a shame." At least the tragedy in her voice was genuine. "You're not in love with anyone." And what that meant for Mrs. Fireman she didn't know, but to her, it meant the world was now paler, a world without yellow dust or its implications.

"Yes, I am!" Loyal to a fault, that man. He probably still bought into the thought that married couples were always in love, and war was okay as long as we won.

"It doesn't show."

"I am, very much in love! I am!" He was distressed, and she was sorry.

"Oh, please don't look that way." Dear, fragile ambiguity. She was a sucker for avoiding frank statements.

He looked suspiciously at the flower, now wilted, in her hand. "It's that dandelion. You've used it all up on yourself. That's why it won't work for me."

And now her mind, always on the run, conjured a fitting set of symbolism: she was so full of infatuation, pure love and love of life, that she had drained him dry. Her love was vampiric, he had none left for himself.

But if he was willing to lie, so was she. "Of course, that must be it. Oh, now I've upset you, I can see I have; I'm sorry, really I am." He was grimacing, and though she had never seen him really upset, she didn't want to make him that way.

"No, no, I'm all right." This time, the lie didn't solve anything, and it just made her feel worse to hear him say it.

They parted quickly—he towards that blasted firehouse, and she back on her circuit of the sidewalk. She tilted her head back, and squeezed her eyes shut, and if she ignored her tastebuds, she could pretend the glaze on her face was just the autumn rain.

~Fin~


End file.
